I loved Looper. The concept, awesome. Truly, truly awesome. But... I think they overdid things with the TK aspect. You've got a film about time travel and the paradox of meeting yourself, amped up in Looper to killing your future self. Amazing and rich, relatively untapped story potential there. Then to add the Rain Maker portion, humans gai ing TK/psionic powers? Then to boot, this almost 'second coming' like child who towers over us all?

Too much, imo, and enough to cause the general public to shrug their shoulders Inception-like. Admittedly the time travel equals mega-suspension of disbelief, so why not go all out? I just think they had more than enough room to play around with one crazy sci-fi element without adding yet another.

Particularly since Push (2009), handled this secondary element superbly, and was largely panned by critics and the general public. I think Push is one of the best films of the past decade for sci-fi, and it got no attention or respect. So as much as I enjoyed Looper in all regards, I think adding the TK bit not only prevented it from gaining traction with large numbers but also detracted from exploring time travel and subsequent paradoxes.

Maybe I'm slightly biased because I felt like they were forced to use that plotline for all the wrong reasons. I saw it as studio execs saying, 'Yeah, time travel. Neat. What's the end game/ultimate conflict to leave Joe Blow satisfied. The way it stands, there's not even a protagonist. Give him something to fight, sacrifice, a big battle to send people home happy.' I just can't imagine why it gets included for any other reason.

I loved Looper. The concept, awesome. Truly, truly awesome. But... I think they overdid things with the TK aspect. You've got a film about time travel and the paradox of meeting yourself, amped up in Looper to killing your future self. Amazing and rich, relatively untapped story potential there. Then to add the Rain Maker portion, humans gai ing TK/psionic powers? Then to boot, this almost 'second coming' like child who towers over us all?

Too much, imo, and enough to cause the general public to shrug their shoulders Inception-like. Admittedly the time travel equals mega-suspension of disbelief, so why not go all out? I just think they had more than enough room to play around with one crazy sci-fi element without adding yet another.

Particularly since Push (2009), handled this secondary element superbly, and was largely panned by critics and the general public. I think Push is one of the best films of the past decade for sci-fi, and it got no attention or respect. So as much as I enjoyed Looper in all regards, I think adding the TK bit not only prevented it from gaining traction with large numbers but also detracted from exploring time travel and subsequent paradoxes.

Maybe I'm slightly biased because I felt like they were forced to use that plotline for all the wrong reasons. I saw it as studio execs saying, 'Yeah, time travel. Neat. What's the end game/ultimate conflict to leave Joe Blow satisfied. The way it stands, there's not even a protagonist. Give him something to fight, sacrifice, a big battle to send people home happy.' I just can't imagine why it gets included for any other reason.

I believe time travel and tk were merely a setting and plot device to keep the story going. The story seemed to be mainly about what drives people to do things. It started out like one film and then immediately went to something else once they reached the farm. I'm with you 100% when it comes to how they handled the setting... but I think that was their primary objective from the get go.

As for the story itself, I think they should've just killed the kid. Sure, the last 5 minutes explains the possibility of preventing a rainmaker, but it still leaves that chance for him to develop to that level... I dunno... just felt attached to Bruce and JGL's characters that I felt it was random to feel sympathy for a kid who has these abilities that will eventually kill people. It's the exact same scenario in the show Lost.

I'd never thought about it like that, but you raise a good point. I watched it a couple months back, never gave it much consideration beyond what I wrote. If you view the main goal of the story as being trapped in 'loops', unable to break the cycle/etc... Then I could be way off base about the studio exec interference.

The whole kid/TK theme just seemed out of the blue. They could have done the same thing with the next Hitler type, absent the TK, and the story probably would have been stronger/more coherent. Like you mentioned, the kid was hardly sympathetic... The fact he had a power beyond any other human sort of took away the impact and made him more dangerous and more suited for a bullet in the head. No matter what, he's going to pose a risk.

I saw the TK as a way they could have an epic battle, blow some cash on CG. Like I said, the time travel should be enough for any story. If they didn't set out with time travel and the 'inner conflict'/battle between your past self and a future you as their primary plot device, but on 'Going back in time and killing baby Adolf/breaking out of an unending cycle', the story would have been 100x better keeping the kid but removing the telekinetic bit from the story.

So whether the kid was crucial to the story they wanted to tell or not, the TK ended up being a distraction that convoluted an already difficult premise. I'd actually argue that it harmed a film with the kid/future evil/break the loop more than a film without the kid in it at all... In other words - A film with the kid in it/future evil lost more adding the TK than a movie centered on the future self/time travel paradox that added both the kid and the TK. As nonsensical as those last two sentence are, hopefully I managed to get my meaning across.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

A story of drugs and their side effects. As others have recommended, the less you know of the movie going in, the better.

Rooney Mara is pretty darn fantastic in this one.

If this is truly Soderbergh's last movie, he didn't hit a home run, but as I believe Deadspin said, making a career out of hitting doubles isn't necessarily a bad thing.

B

Yea I just watched this one. Surprisingly good. I didn't like the ending, but the second half reminded me of Wild Things with Dillon and Denise "I don't know how to act, but some men think I'm hot" Richards. Btw, I'm convinced that Catherine Zeta-Jones is an alien in a human body, she looks weird, either that or she's looks like what the human race will develop into 10,000 years from now, monkeys to humans to Zeta-Jones's or Jolie's.